Blog - nut free

This is gluten-free baking at it's finest. They're sugar-free too, but who's telling? These cookies are a perfect copycat of traditional shortbread cookies, only 5 ingredients, and 100% kid approved!

(Makes 20-24 Cookies, Depending on Size of Cutouts)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup softened butter

1/2 cup xyltiol sugar-free icing sugar (*see below for how to make this simple icing sugar!)

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 cup rice flour

1/2 cup tapioca starch/flour

*Pour a bag of xylitol into a high powered food processor and pulse (intermittently if continuous pulsing does not breakdown the granules properly) until all the sugar becomes a fine powder. This sugar free icing sugar works great in baking, but not for actual icing. (Xylitol is a natural sugar alcohol derived from birch bark, fruits and vegetables, and tastes sweet like sugar but no sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream.)

Add the butter, xylitol icing sugar, and vanilla to a large bowl and mix on low until all the butter breaks down (no butter clumps!) and combines with the sugar. In a separate bowl combine the rice flour and tapioca starch until the flours are blended. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low in between additions. It will become very crumbly. Then use your hands to work the dough together and form a dough ball.

**If using the dough to cut out shapes, then cover and refrigerate dough for 20-30 minutes. Then roll the dough between two pieces of parchment paper until about 1/4 inch thick.

**If using dough to make a more simple cookie, don't refrigerate. Scoop the dough by a tbsp measure onto the lined cookie sheet. Then roll each Tbsp into little dough balls. Use the back of a spoon or the prongs of a fork to flatten each cookie.

Bake cookies in preheated oven for 20 - 24 minutes until edges begin to brown and cookie is cooked through.

Allow to cool full before decorating with your choice of icing. Sprinkle on the flax before icing sets!

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